Patchwork: Over 25 Glorious Quilt Designs

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Kaffe Fassett was born in San Francisco in 1937. Kaffe started as a fine artist, winning a scholarship to study at The Boston Museum of Fine Arts School when he was nineteen. He left after three months to paint in London, and he still continues to exhibit his paintings. After settling in England in 1964, his passion for colour led him to knitting and designing knitwear for Missoni and Bill Gibb amongst others, and his hand-knitted garments are now in museum collections all over the world. He later took up needlepoint and patchwork, creating both his own works and designs for others to make.

Fast forward many years later when my interests moved from knitting to quilting. During those years, Kaffe’s design world also expanded to encompass needlepoint patterns, mosaics, fabric designs and quilt patterns. I found his first quilt design book, Glorious Patchwork, to be equally innovative and inspiring. And since I also love bright colors, I am always instinctively drawn to his fabric collections. Kaffe Fassett autographs his books at the Dubai Quilt Show Since then Kaffe has been involved in an ever expanding range of activities, charitable as well as artistic. In the 1990s he teamed up with Candace Bahouth to work on mosaics. In 1993 he designed costumes and sets for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of ‘As You Like It’. In 1998 he designed Hillier’s garden at the Chelsea Flower Show. He is constantly on the move teaching and lecturing around the world and in recent years a growing proportion of his time has been devoted to expanding his range of fabric prints for the patchwork market. He can never resist a new challenge and shows no sign of slowing down. Talking to many of the other classmates it was clear the majority were attending this quilt show just so that they could take this workshop with Kaffe. Attendees were here from many different European countries, as well as other areas of the Middle East. One of my table mates had only just started learning to quilt 10 days before this trip because she was such a huge fan of Kaffe’s work.From 2009, Kaffe has been a Patron of Fine Cell Work’s ‘A Gift of Quilts’, charity project working with prisoners to create needlepoint and patchwork items sold internationally.

He highlighted what he loved about each quilt using words that were also emphasized with large, expressive whole-body gestures. As he pointed out specific details about the color combinations that he admired in each example, phrases like “love the chanciness”, “otherworldly palette”, “sings out” and “absorbs heat” were combined with positive encouragements like “gorgeous”, “stunning”, “outrageous”, “lush” and “delicate”. You could see each student glow with joy as he praised their color innovations. Kaffe discusses one more of the class quiltsFrom early 2000s, major exhibitions have included ‘The Textile Tradition, Then and Now’ (2001) and Quilt Bonanza (2003) both at The American Museum in Bath, plus shows at Stening Slott, in Sweden (2004) and Rohsska Museet, in Gothenburg (2004). He was christened Frank Havrah Fassett but as a teenager decided to change his name to the more artistic sounding Kaffe (rhymes with safe) after an Egyptian character in a children’s book. He freely admitted that he was fortunate to grow up in the 1950’s in an atypical (even for California) home and school environment that supported and encouraged his natural artistic creativity.